


Every Single Piece

by alaskacaldwell



Series: Every Single Piece of Us [1]
Category: Supernatural, destiel - Fandom, sabriel - Fandom
Genre: Anal Sex, Canon-Typical Violence, Depressed Castiel, Depressed Dean Winchester, Depressed sex, Doctor Dean Winchester, Domestic Violence, Drugs, Drunk Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ex-Military Dean, Explicit Sexual Content, Family Issues, Gay Sex, Homophobia, Insecure Dean, M/M, Openly Bisexual Dean, Oral Sex, Past Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitute Castiel, Rough Sex, Sexual Tension, Suicidal Castiel, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-11 14:25:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7056217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alaskacaldwell/pseuds/alaskacaldwell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is an ex army medic turned emergency room doc on call. He's lost it all after his wife and adopted son left him while he was in Afghanistan... so he pushes himself to work as much as possible to avoid having to return to an empty home and the nightly PTSD nightmares that plague him when he sleeps. Everything changes when Castiel Novak is rushed into the ambulance bay with two slit wrists, a stomach full of pills and an undeniable death wish. When Dean learns Castiel has no way to pay for the hospital services that save the life he doesn't want, and only the street and his pimp to return to, Dean takes control of Castiel's life, and his own, and invites the broken man into his home. And what begins as two shattered men becomes one unbreakable bond, defying the rules of society and logic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

Chapter 1

~ Dean ~

It was the eleventh hour into Dean’s night shift when he finished his third cup of coffee. If coffee were a drug, he would be in serious trouble… Dean thought. Because he was pretty sure it was the only thing that kept him conscious and vertical these days, and not to mention, of any use to anyone else. Popping two caffeine pills he looked down to consult the charts he was currently working - one minor car accident, a geriatric pneumonia and a domestic issue – he couldn’t remember the details of the latter. He’d stitched, and x-rayed and medicated his way through the line, only thinking once about that night when everything had changed. Even thinking about thinking about it was so far from acceptable, Dean shoved it back into the pit he kept in the back of his mind where all of his feelings lived, breathed and eventually died.  
Dean was in the process of checking up on the pneumonia case when, outside, the howl of sirens screamed into the ambulance bay as the trauma team responded, springing into action and running to the automatic sliding doors. He quickly signed off on the domestic patient and jogged after them, glancing up as the EMTs rushed past the nurses’ station, the wheels of the gurney squealing on the bleached tiles when they rounded the corner.  
As the ambulance patient was transferred from the gurney to the trauma bed, one technician rattled off the patient’s stats while another began to intubate the man on the bed. Dr. Winchester followed, already calculating what measures it would take to save the man’s life.  
He grabbed a pair of latex gloves and snapped them on over his hands as he entered the room, throwing a furtive glance at the chart the head nurse was busy scribbling information onto.  
Dean turned to her while pulling his stethoscope free from around his neck.  
“Give me the story, Becky, Cliffnotes version only, please.”  
He bent over to clock the man’s BPM.  
The petite blonde paused, looking over in a state of alarm as the man on the bed began to jerk in the beginnings of a seizure. She flipped through the two pages they had managed to obtain so far on who the staff was currently calling The John Doe.  
Dean didn’t like it, but remained quiet and focused.  
While Becky read, Dean called out the nurse in the back of the room – Jo, he knew her name was – and requested a central line installed, ASAP, and spun his attention back to the charge nurse.  
“Temp, pulse and respiratory are all symptomatic of an O.D. – lower than low. BP is barely registering. As of yet, all we know is that the patient male, mid-twenties, found inside a bathroom in a nightclub downtown, vomiting blood into a urinal. Witnesses said they saw him ingesting multiple narcotics and amphetamines throughout the night with copious amounts of alcohol, but that he does so regularly. One witness at the scene, a man by the name of - Balthazar, said he had heard the patient claiming ‘He wanted it to stop.’ Said the man kept repeating those words over and over.”  
Dean cursed under his breath.  
“I know the feeling, brother. Hang in there for me.”  
Dean looked over at the man on the bed. A suicidal druggie… there were other patients out in the lobby that had been waiting hours to be seen, and here’s this guy, who doesn’t give a fuck about living at all, and Dean knows as sure as anything that he will treat him first.  
“Did we get any emergency contact info on our J.D. here?” Dean asked while injecting a substantial dose of Narcan into the central line the trauma team had installed without incident.  
Becky worked efficiently beside him, prepping the syringes and administering the dosages he called for.  
“All we have is a name,” She says, looking down at the chart and back up at the man on the bed, something along the lines of sympathy etched on her perfectly made face. The patient’s skin was slick and pale with a sweat cold to the touch, and his eyes had rolled back in his head. The ashen shade of near-death makes his messy hair look darker than it is. “Castiel Novak.”

“Get me a blood workup and run every test you can think of on his organs. I need to know what state he is in, internally. Also, give me a chemical detail of what all is in his system; we need to know what we’re up against here.”  
Two nurses set about drawing the requested blood from the central line and running with it to the lab. Dean’s patient Novak wouldn’t have to wait hours, just a couple of minutes. The Narcan was already calming his seizing and all vitals were slowly rising. Just to be sure, though, Dean left him on the intubation tubes. He couldn’t say why, but he wasn’t taking any chances.  
Dean sent two more nurses off for charcoal and a stomach pump. As he waited for the results of his direction to come together to save Castiel’s life, he spared a lingering glance at the patient. His eyes were closed now. Pitch lashes rested against skin that might have been bronze were it not for the poison he had swallowed and the blood he had drawn from the precise slices into his forearms. His full lips turned down around the sides of the intubation hose. Dean realized that what he was looking at was the sort of beautiful that was so rare, it often broke, like crystal, or painted glass, beauty like this was hardly ever tempered with kindness. Dean wondered why this man wanted to end his life – if it were something about a girl or something deeper seated. Dean realized with a start that he needed to know. What did he want to stop? Every look he spared at the patient made something sad and desperate twist inside of him. Dean made the decision then: This man would not die here, not under Dean’s watch. 

 

I write to music. Always… If you really want to live this scene to the fullest, listen to “People Help the People” by Birdy. This is the song I wrote Castiel’s waking scene and the meeting with Dean to. I feel it perfectly conveys the tone. Hope you enjoy. 

~Castiel~  
“Castiel, can you hear me?”  
I groaned aloud, turning away from the hands trying to peel apart my eyelids. Who in the hell did that? The hands followed my face and continued their intrusion.  
“You’ll have to do better than that, with me at least.” The Voice responded, and briefly I wondered if I had succeeded, and this was God or whatever, about to tell me my afterlife was about to be fifty times as bad as my shitty excuse for a life had been.  
There was a click and then my left eye was wrenched opened to what could have only been a high powered search light, no doubt looking for a soul or a blown pupil. It moved on to the other, the fingers on my face firm, yet still gentle. Yeah… definitely heaven… I wouldn’t know what gentle was if it came and bit me in the ass. I jerked my arms up, but they didn’t move far. Restraints and bandages dug into my skin with the movement and I coughed out a curse. The pain was mind-numbing.  
“Whoa, take it easy, alright? Those are stitches, not rivets. “  
I blinked a couple times to bring the room back into focus.  
“I’m at the hospital, huh?” I asked the figure standing before me – a doctor – judging by the scrubs.  
He exhales sharply and some distant part of my brain registers this as amusement. I squint to look at him better… sometimes if I can get someone to look into my eyes… I don’t know… things just seem to go a little bit more in my favor, crazy as that sounds. He does look up when I flutter my eyelids and freezes. The doctor scrubs his forefinger and thumb across his open lips. He remembers with a start that I asked him a question.  
“Yeah, you’re here for as long as I can keep the insurance vultures out there at bay.”  
I winced, shifting my position in the bed as best I could, ignoring what sparks of the pain I was able to.  
“I thought all of you were on the same team?”  
He looks down at my wrists and over his shoulder at the door. Shaking his head so gently, I barely catch the gesture.  
“This wasn’t my first career choice.”  
He offers me a cup of chipped ice for my blistered throat. I nodded pointedly at the restraints. The doctor inclines his head, frowning as if he had somehow forgotten the bonds. Unfastening one and then the other, he is forced to lean close. He smells like coffee and faded cologne. I accept the cup of ice and sip at it, feeling as if it were nectar from the gods. He warns me to take it easy with the ice too, but I ignore him. I don’t know how to take a damn thing easy. When my vocal chords were satisfied with their share of moisture, I pass the cup back to him.  
“So, if you’re not like them, what are you? Is this some hospital version of good cop, bad cop?”  
He didn’t smile at my joke, just looked sad and tired as he drags a hand through his close cropped sandy blond hair. The result is something close to sex hair, although I’m sure the good doctor is entirely unaware of this. I keep my mouth shut and admire the view.  
“I don’t know... And before you think I’m giving you a bullshit answer, it’s the truth, okay? I just don’t know. This little conversation we’re having here,” He motions to the space between us, “I’m sure there are at least three or four codes of conduct I’m breaking. But you know what?”  
The doctor sits on the edge of the bed beside me and leans closer than I can remember ever wanting a doctor to lean, and before I can realize what’s what, he’s hovering really fucking close to my face and all I can think is that he smells like coffee and faded cologne - Something nice, but not fancy. I remember things like that… whenever you sell tricks; it’s the little skills like that that save your ass, figuratively, anyways. It’s in the details…  
I swallowed and instantly regretted the motion, but there he was, this rule-breaking doc and his life saving Styrofoam cup of chipped ice.  
“What?” I choked out, finally, in response.  
Without looking, he reached behind him and drew the wheeled stool thingy beneath him. His eyes never left me. They were a disarming shade of green that didn’t seem possible in reality.  
Drugs… I told myself. This was drugs, or maybe the lights… but he turned those down... I was not supposed to find the ER doc attractive. Especially after first waking from what should have been a coma or something along the lines of me seeing a light and a tunnel. 

“I don’t care what those bitches say. I’m here to save lives, not sign papers. At least that’s what I signed up for.”  
He stares at me, without relenting and I stare back, entranced or intoxicated, unsure which anymore.  
“You saved my life.”  
It isn’t a question and yet, I want him to say something else, I want to hear the deep growl of his voice one more time.  
“Yes, I did. Took me eight hours and a couple of threats that you were not going to die – that I wasn’t going to let you. And I don’t give the slightest fuck if you don’t want to be saved.”  
I lower my head, suck some ice chips, and notice somewhere in the back of my mind that my bottom lip is busted, but my eyes keep scanning the doctor’s face and he stares right on back at me, full of this unreadable emotion that people in my part of the world just never have the luxury to feel.  
“No, I didn’t. Want to be saved, that is.” I eventually say just to keep the conversation going. He doesn’t seem like the type intent on lecturing me about the pros of life, not at the moment anyway. Although there is something in his eyes that reminds me of fire, he is looking at me like I am every single piece of fucking kindle in the world. And yet, all the while he gazes at me… like the sort of person that is trying to remember what those pros of life were in the first place, just for my benefit.  
I forgot about the million and one reasons I wanted to be an unnamed corpse on a slab downtown. Just then, I really needed to know why the good doctor looked like he should be sitting here instead of me.  
“You know,” I say for something to say, “I’m just going to be here again, sooner, probably, than later, and I’ll cut deeper, swallow a few more pills… it’s just a matter of time.”  
I aim for nonchalance and maybe even a strange sort of comfort. One of those – You-can’t-save-everyone- speeches. But oh, those eyes widened, flaring to life and gleaming like twin shards of glass, ready to tear me apart despite just to put me back together.  
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to know how to save someone and to still be helpless? To stand there with all of the knowledge and the tools ready at your fingertips, and the fucking body won’t have the decency to just let you heal it?”  
He looked at me so hard, if I wasn’t already, I would have broken.  
“Do you ever think of us when you’re taking your pills, cutting your veins?”  
When I remained speechless, he continued.  
“No, I didn’t think so.”  
He stood up in one swift motion and paced away from the bed. I immediately felt the loss of his presence. I didn’t understand any of this, but there was this part of my brain, the farthest corner, that really, really wanted to. It wanted to understand him. I shoved it back and locked it down with the other thoughts that I couldn’t afford to think.  
He wheeled around and grabbed the railings to which my hands had been bound and suddenly our faces are very close, and I’m sure this is so many kinds of unprofessional and I’m sure he could get into trouble for it, but damn me, I don’t protest, don’t move, just stare back.  
“I saw you flatline twice. They told me to let you go the second time. I told them to fuck off. Look… I used to be an army medic. I’ve seen enough young men die; good men and I can’t do it anymore. Not one more time. So you’re going to change you’re fucking attitude because there are those of us who try to save people like you every day and it becomes a little disheartening when you all keep pouring through those doors with your death wishes written all over your body. Some of us just can’t keep doing it, okay?”  
By the time he finishes, he’s breathing hard and something inside of him seems to have deflated or broken. I want to comfort him, but I can’t comfort myself. Yet somehow, these words come into my mouth and slide on out before my brain can analyze them.  
“You sound like one of us. Like someone who wants to die. I’ve never met anyone else that was as done with this life as I was.”  
His hands tighten on the railings.  
“You’re not done with anything.”  
I lean forwards, ignoring the pain from the torture I have just inflicted on myself, just needing to be closer to him. When my voice comes, it’s not damaged from stomach pumps or burns. It’s just my voice, and for that I am grateful. I deliver the words firmly, gently.  
“Do you doctors ever think about us, about why we’re doing this? Does it ever occur to you that there is nothing else, or that what there is, is not worth living one goddamned day more for?”  
He looks like I insulted his religion or something. So I continue, wanting, needing him, this man whose name I don’t even know, to understand my deepest secrets - My darkest shame. Hell if I know or understand why. Maybe because he’s the one that’s to blame for me still breathing and feeling.  
“I’ve lived in foster homes since I was ten – that all started when some well-meaning soul reported my step-father to CPS. See, he thought I was really pretty, in a way no one should think children are pretty. But when they took me away, they just set me up for the same old thing, except I just became some stranger’s to fuck; home after home, right up until I turned eighteen. I only knew a few things then – that I wanted to get the hell away from people, that I liked to read, and that the only thing I had any skill with was giving men pleasure.”  
Switched songs here – Drown by Austin Jones (Acoustic. In case you’re into music to bring your story to life…  
Pain flickers across the doctor’s face, but this story isn’t done yet.  
“So, I had two options: get me a minimum wage job flipping burgers and sleep at a homeless shelter, with more men who would want a piece of my body… or, I could just give in to this… destiny - I could sell myself and have a small place to claim; a place that was mine. You might guess what choice I went with.”  
He disengages the railings and backs away, horror and disgust written all over his face, plain as if someone had taken a Sharpie and scrawled it out. I don’t want him to back away. I want him to hover. He saved me; he lectured me when he could have moved on to other patients.  
He turns slightly and looks out the door and then back at me.  
“What pushed you over? Your limit, I mean.”  
I knew I could be honest, and that this was probably the only place I could be. So I was.  
“I was tired. I… didn’t want to sell myself anymore. I wanted out. This was the only way I saw. The memories… they’re never going to go away, you know… even if I could shake my pimp. This life of mine wasn’t meant to be. I fell through every crack there was to fall through. Suicide seemed like I was doing the world a favor.”  
He steps towards the bed but seems lost as what to do next.  
“Castiel…”  
The doctor kneels down and I don’t know what to think or to feel when his hand finds its way into mine. He stares at our conjoined hands as I stare at him, and I wish circumstances were different, that I could have met him as some carefree young man and not this busted and spent twenty-six year old. I wished I could help him, the way he was trying to help me.  
I rubbed the back of his large, calloused hand with my thumb despite the pull on the stitches.  
“It’s just Cas.”  
He looks up at me and I almost lurch back, because there are tears in his eyes. He squeezes my hand gently.  
“Tell me how I can help you. Please. It was my job to stabilize your body in the hospital, but I want you to tell me how I… how can I save your life?”  
I feel myself frown. This is a situation I don’t understand. For the first time in a very long time, I don’t want to die in this moment. I want to help him. First off to scrape that perpetual frown away. But, the thing is, to do that, I have to want to live. I have to want.  
The doctor seems oblivious to my personal dilemma.  
“Castiel, Cas, this is selfish of me… I don’t know what’s right or wrong, I used to, but I’m just not sure I can make out that line between black and white anymore.”  
He looks up into my eyes and I feel like he’s searching for something there.  
“I’ve talked to you, really talked - not just the doctor patient crap that most of my conversations consist of. I know you, well, I know your story, part of it, and I can’t go home, I can’t leave this room knowing you will end because of what those assholes have done to you. I can’t do it. So I need you to let me save you. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do this, but I need you to let me try.”  
He was rambling, but, dear God, it all made so much sense then, every single piece.  
I looked past his shoulder at the door and back to those green eyes I was becoming a little too fond of.  
“Shouldn’t you be helping other people? I thought there was a time limit doctors stayed in a room with a patient…”  
My words are met with his frown.  
“I’m off the clock – have been for the past nine hours. I’m technically here as a visitor.”  
I looked at his scrubs pointedly.  
He looked down and scrubbed his hand across his stubble in a gesture that I was quickly beginning to realize was characteristic.  
“Yeah… I never left.” He mutters, looking away.  
I cocked my head.  
He starts pacing, clearly uncomfortable now that the spotlight is on him.  
“We’ve already established I wanted to stay to see what happened to you… but if I left, Registration would be in here as soon as they realized you were awake. And I just figured… someone who doesn’t want to live doesn’t need to be bothered about the bill for services they didn’t want and didn’t ask for.”  
I felt my eyes narrow and my chest start to ache a little.  
He caught the movement and continued.  
“Also… they are planning on transferring you to the city facility.”  
I laughed harshly and did my best to look out the locked window.  
“Right… the psych hospital… Because that’s going to help so much,”  
He comes closer to the bed and one of his hands twitches towards the railing.  
“Cas, I’m not going to let them take you.”  
I laughed again, but it just sounded empty. Even to me.  
“Isn’t that a little bit above your pay grade, Doc?”  
He shakes his head.  
“I could pull a few strings… with a couple conditions.”  
Where this cockiness in me was coming from, I had no idea.  
“Ah, conditions. Pesky little buggers… well, let’s hear them.”  
He looks nervous or anxious and I don’t understand this man at all.  
“You would have to be accompanied by someone who is going to be able to supervise you, and also ensure that you receive the proper follow up treatment.”  
I rolled my eyes.  
“Did you miss the part of my story where I mentioned that I don’t have anyone?”  
His eyes flared at me, but, to his credit, he kept his tone cool.  
“If you would hear me out… I have the adequate requirements. I also just took a leave off. I could take you with me… and… I could care for you.”  
I don’t miss a beat.  
“I’m supposed to go with you when I don’t even know your name?”  
He gave me a look and the doctor vestige slipped just like that. He was the man without the white lab coat – the army medic maybe – and I was now fair game.  
“Like it would be the first time you’ve done something like that. I’m not asking anything from you other than you give me the opportunity to help you. And what are you so afraid of? Dying?”  
I looked at him, really looked. This hard honesty… was exactly what I needed. I felt it in the part of me that didn’t want to be on a slab downtown. Hadn’t realized that part even existed, not until this strange man crossed paths with me.  
I reached out, painfully, and took his coat from the chair beside my bed. Turning it over under his watchful gaze, I found the set of ID badges.  
I didn’t look up as I responded, in the flash of a moment and as impulsive as ever... And it was just like that… it happened – made sense in a way little ever did.  
“I could go with you.”


	2. Two

Chapter Two

~Dean~

Unbreakable – Jamie Scott  
Still Alive – 3 Doors Down  
Stay – 30 Seconds to Mars

I slide the door closed to Castiel Novak’s room and lean my forehead against the glass. He couldn’t see me with the curtain pulled to block the prying scrutiny of those who walked by. Closing my eyes, I take a moment to consider what I am about to do. I’d already half lied - but in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t feel like the lies really mattered all that much. I knew what Castiel needed, and it wasn’t a bill or a transfer to a high security facility that would suck what spirit he had remaining away.   
I shoved away the questions that turned over in my mind –Why was I so completely involved? But I knew the answer. He was a mirror image and a second chance all wrapped up in gauze and sarcasm.   
Leaning back, I glanced down the hallway I had rushed through and walked down several hundred times. The image of it was burned into my memory, and should I ever go blind, I knew without a doubt I could still traverse this labyrinth without any problem. The sodium lights, the astringent odors of bleach and blood and the incessant monotone of medical jargon feels heavy outside of Castiel’s room. It all feels like something I could live the rest of my life without ever seeing again. I briefly wonder why that is.   
Seventeen hours watching him sleep and fifteen minutes speaking and already I needed the interaction more than the coffee I lived off of. It was on that train of thought I started off down the well-worn hall tiles towards the office of the only woman I answered to: Naomi. I knocked once and entered, without waiting for her call to enter. I never waited - everyone knew I had the patience of a caged animal. She looked up as I entered, annoyance flashing behind her hazel eyes before she rose in greeting.   
“Dr. Winchester, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Surely there hasn’t been an incident with another nurse? I had heard a rumor you used some… choice language during your trauma case tonight. I chose to ignore it because of your end result…but… know that while the Army may find profanity acceptable, we do not.”  
I shook my head, only half hearing what she was droning on about and dropped into one of the outdated chairs she kept before her desk. People said she kept them because they were particularly uncomfortable and discouraged anyone from lingering longer than necessary. I believed the gossip. There wasn’t a single thing about Naomi that encouraged anything other than the reason for your visit, which you immediately began to question once in her presence.   
I swallowed all of this down and stared at the framed plaques littering the wall behind her desk.   
“I’ve come to resign.”  
The papers she’s fiddling with went still, and all that can be heard is the window unit pumping cool air into the already chilly room. Her kitten heels click around the back of my chair and on around the corner of her desk. She lowers herself into the orthopedic number she loves and sets the papers on the desk in a neat stack. They are instantly lost among a hundred identical others.   
“Dean… Is this about the PTSD you’ve been experiencing, or something else? You know that you can talk to me about anything,”  
Concern shows on her face, but it’s pinned there like the pink smile on a Barbie doll or a pretty butterfly with a thumbtack through its abdomen.  
The thought of her knowing any weakness of mine makes me want to both punch her in the face and bolt from the room, so I sit still and purposely read another diploma behind her head.   
“No… well, yes, it is. I feel as though it would be beneficial for me to take some time off to reacquaint myself with… life.”  
God, the words sounded so contrived and tinny I wanted to gag.   
Naomi steepled her hands - elbows on the desk in front of her.  
“I see, and I take it your unannounced entrance this resignation is effective immediately?”  
I nod, still reading the wall of Naomi’s achievements.   
“Yes, well, it is after I take care of my last patient.”  
She looks down at a paper on the desk before her. Peoples’ lives reduced to cheap ink and recycled paper.  
“The suicide attempt…. Castiel Novak?”  
I hated how his name sounded in her mouth, how her lips concluded his story in three short words… because that was how she saw him – hell, that was probably how she saw all of us - Categories to be sorted and filed. I wondered how long it would take her to realize I belonged in the broken column, or if she already had.   
“That’s the one,” I chimed, determined to be as inexplicably pleasant as possible and sliding what she had of his profile across the desk so that I could read whatever notes she was keeping on him.   
“Resolving his status should be simple enough – he’s an obvious case for the county. There’s a van coming around noon to pick up all patients with psych disorders.” She remarked.   
I might have glared at her before swallowing down my distaste. Frayed edges were only allowed behind closed doors.   
Anyways, I was about to burst her perfect bubble.  
“Actually, I’ve evaluated him, talked with him and had the psych team come in and check him out for good measure… he’s alright. He was… off his meds which caused a chemical imbalance leading to the suicidal episode. I have him back on the medication, with prescription refills lasting long enough for him to see the doctor I’ve arranged.”  
Her smile is like glaciers moving, cracking apart, and falling into the ocean and the global meltdown that follows.   
“Thorough as ever, Dr. Winchester, whatever will we do without your careful follow ups?”  
I didn’t have an answer. All I knew was that I would lie my way through this meeting, eat my retorts, sell my damned soul – whatever it took - to get the hell out of this office as soon as physically possible.   
She retook Castiel’s profile and began to skim her eyes over it as if she hadn’t read all of my cases already.   
“There is still the matter of payment for services. Has registration been in to see him at all?”  
My teeth ground together.   
“No, I’ve dismissed them.”  
Her eyebrow raised into a steep and dangerous angle.  
“How do you propose Mr. Novak pay for his services, then, Dr. Winchester?”  
Bile stung the back of my throat as I thought about the words I had just exchanged with Cas. His life was more than an amount calculated on a printout by a hospital desk jockey. I resented this whole exchange because of her attitude. Hell, I resented this whole damned hospital, because when it came down to the brass tacks, it was all about the green.   
Saving people… for the right price.   
“Mr. Novak doesn’t have the funds to pay for the services I provided – And I have already discussed this with him.”  
Another lie – But who was counting?  
She gazed at me, waiting for the words we both knew I could never keep to myself. So I went ahead and flung myself off the metaphorical cliff.  
“Now that I am no longer officially apart of this place and its incessant need for blood money, I’ll be paying for the services I provided to save Castiel Novak’s life.”  
Nothing moved except her eyes, which narrowed ever so slightly - the subtlest hint of her inner thoughts on the matter.   
“You’re going to pay a patient’s bill?”  
My good grace was in ashes on her pretty floor.  
“I think that’s what I just said, right?”   
Her lips tighten to match her eyes, giving her face an overall pinched look.  
“There’s no need for sarcasm, Doctor Winchester.”  
I stand up because I can’t read another damned word on the wall behind her telling me how great she is.   
“And while we’re on the subject of Mr. Novak, I’ll be driving him home.”  
Naomi opened her mouth and something came out, but I had the door open and was through it so quickly, the words were lost to me.  
I needed to get out of here.  
I needed to see Castiel.   
I needed, I needed. 

 

~Castiel~  
Army of Angels – The Script

By the time Dean Winchester was finished talking to the staff at the hospital, and we had walked/wheeled out the sliding glass doors – a different set than I had entered by – we were apparently quite the site. Around every new corner there were glances, and of those I was accustomed to, but I felt for the doctor. He was trying to do something so good, and of course, true to form, humanity was a dick about it. Fortunately, it didn’t appear to matter to him, because he glared back at each onlooker and continued wheeling me to the main door.   
When we stopped, I looked up at him curiously and he bent down, close enough to set my already overworked heart racing. I caught the scent again – his scent – and I tried not to breathe too deeply, or move too much, because every single piece of me wanted to. He locked the wheels into place on the chair and straightened up slowly, and it was apparent that his long stint at the hospital had more than psychological effects on him – he moved as if his muscles were stiff and pained him.   
I frowned.  
“Alright,” He said, surveying the parking lot, “I’m going to go get my car. Do you… can you wait here for a couple of minutes?”  
I pointedly looked at the security guard watching me like I was going to pull a Glock out of my hospital gown and open fire.   
The doctor looked at the man and then back at me.   
“I just want to be sure you’re here when I get back.”  
A moment after the words were out of his mouth, a look of shock crossed his features, and then everything about his face went dark and shut down like an internal power outage had suddenly occurred.   
I felt myself frowning deeper.   
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, maybe a little too eagerly, “I, uh, I’ll wait here.”  
Real smooth, Cas.  
He nodded tightly and pulled his keys out of his coat pocket and ducked his head against the misty rain falling in horizontal sheets across the carefully manicured lot, with its miniature trees and sickeningly perfect patches of flowers. He walked into that rain without flinching, just full of purpose, or maybe devoid of it. I couldn’t help but watch each movement he made, trying to understand this man who was apparently the only human in all of the whole who wanted to help me… for nothing in return.  
I couldn’t understand it.   
I wanted to understand.   
The Doctor disappeared around a corner and out of my line of sight.  
I looked down. My arms were wrapped and bound carefully, professionally, tenderly.   
He had done this… occurred to me. My chest ached and little warning bells went off, screaming I was already too invested, too attached. How could that be? I threw back at myself, twenty hours before I had been trying to die.   
Nothing had changed.   
I would let him play his routine and see what happened there, and, when he was done with me like everyone eventually was, I’d go crawling back to some dark place – my apartment maybe – and reopen the stitches he’d sown. Hell, I’d make new cuts… and there’d be too much damage for even this man to repair.   
Guilt crept up like a dark tendril of smoke and wrapped around me – what if he found out? What if he was the doctor on duty when I was brought in?   
No. I couldn’t think like that. I couldn’t afford to. The Doctor and this living arrangement were temporary.  
I was temporary.  
Everything was. 

 

~Dean~  
Save You – The Moxy  
Drive – Glades  
Wicked Game – Gemma Hayes

 

Sliding into the driver’s side of the Impala, I dug the key into the ignition and waited while the engine heated itself before shifting it into reverse. I paused to glance at my reflection in the rearview mirror and cringed. The dark circles under my eyes deserved their own zip code.   
Disgusted with myself for even thinking about my appearance at a time like this, I pulled out of the parking space reserved for doctors and staff, going as fast as I dared around the side of the building, hoping no one would decide to walk across the road but more that Cas would still be sitting in the wheelchair when I got there.  
What if he was gone?  
I pulled around to the covered waiting area with my breath on pause. When my gaze fell onto the dark mop of hair in the wheelchair, eyes staring out at the early morning commute of doctors, nurses and receptionists, I swear my hear jumped in a way that was purely unprofessional. I shoved it back into place; into that box where things eventually died, and swallowed the alien feeling shoving the Impala into park and throwing open the door.   
It squeaked loudly inciting Cas to look up.   
I swallowed hard and glanced at Henry, the security guard, nodding my thanks.   
He glared at Cas and looked back down to the book he was reading.   
“You’re still here,” I called out, maybe a little too joyfully, striding towards Castiel. He watched me approach with a carefully neutral guise, but the corner of his lips twitched, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to erase that.   
“Yeah, well, I was going to make a break for it, but I didn’t want the old man there to lose his place. I think he’s reading Fifty Shades of Grey.” He said leaning towards me conspiringly; whispering the last of the sentence.   
I chuckled despite myself and unlocked his chair. As I reached down, Cas drew his hand back from the wheel and our hands slid against one another… in a very non doctor-patient way, in a very non I-just-met-you-but-feel-like-I’m-bound-to-you sort of way.   
It was an accident.   
It was nothing.  
I wanted it to happen again.   
Without any further discussion on the hand thing or snarky commentary, I wheeled Cas to the passenger side door, my heart beating double time. I stopped only to open the door and lock the chair into place. I tried to help him stand, but the gaze he shot me was withering, so I straightened and offered him the seat belt instead.  
He still didn’t look as pleased as someone who was alive when they shouldn’t be should.   
“Is this thing necessary?” He complained, “What can a band of fabric prevent that a hunk of metal cannot?”  
I huffed.   
“Hunk of metal? Don’t tell me you’re talking about my Baby.”  
I stroked the roof of the car fondly.   
Castiel rolled his eyes but at least snapped the buckle into place.   
Once I was certain he was secured, I closed the door, returned the chair to the entrance and climbed into the driver’s seat.   
I found my patient examining the interior of my car with an intensity that was bordering on unsettling.   
“Looking for something?”   
He looked over at me in the same way he had ever since his eyes had opened… like I was a lifeboat in the middle of an ocean.   
If only he knew how fast I was sinking…  
“I was admiring your vehicle. It’s in almost mint condition.”  
Relieved the conversation had turned away from hand brushes and feelings I didn’t want to think too much about right now, I shifted into Drive and pressed my sneaker against the gas.   
“I work on her whenever she needs it.”  
He continued staring at me making it difficult to keep my eyes on the road.   
“You like to fix things.”  
It was a deduction of my character. And Jesus, it made me nervous that he was thinking that much about me. If he learned too much, realized too much… he’d want to leave, too. Something about that felt unacceptable. Nothing about Castiel Novak was as black and white as it should have been. He was more complex than I had thought, even just five minutes ago.   
The next two weeks spread out and I began to shake so I clutched the wheel tighter and stared at the blacktop as we paused at a red light.   
“I fix what I can, yeah,” I said, running a hand through my hair, “So much seems broken… I guess you could say I’m trying to even the odds.”  
Confusion was immediate and evident in his voice.   
“The odds…”  
I punched the gas again when the light turned green and we sped down the road out of Seattle.   
“Good and bad, evil, sadness, whatever you want to call it. I want to make people happy, maybe a few things go as they were meant to… instead of the other way around.”  
I risked a glance to the right. Cas was frowning at me.   
“Of all the doctors…” He murmured, “I had to get the one who wanted to save the world.”  
I raised an eyebrow and looked from the road to him, a sort-of grin trying to stretch out farther than I would allow.   
“Is that supposed to be bad?”  
He looked at my shirt, at my hands on the wheel and into my eyes until I thought I would wreck the car… because I couldn’t look anywhere else.   
Castiel spoke quietly, gently even, as he turned away to peer out the window.   
“It’s not bad, Dean… it’s tragic.” 

 

~Castiel~

Everything – Hailey Gardiner  
Stay – 30 Seconds to Mars

 

The rain fell heavily on the windshield as I made the transition from a hazy sleep into a conscious doze, listening as my heart beat in time to the churning of the engine. The interior of the doctor’s - Dean’s – car was so quiet it could have been a coma and was probably the closest thing aside from it. Except that every now and then, I would hear the driver sigh or shift, and I started to wonder sleepily when the last time he had slept was.   
From beneath my lashes I took my time studying him, the stubborn set of his jaw… that tapered down into a porn star’s lips… lashes as long as any female’s… large hands, short nails, he was fit but not a fanatic… and this man never really sat still, and his eyes watched the road without really seeing it. I watched for what could have been ten minutes or an hour as this Dean Winchester drove me away from the city towards a place where he believed he could cure me of twenty-six years of life not worth living for.   
He moved his eyes off the road and stared at me. I wasn’t sure if he knew I was awake or not until he returned his gaze to the road and spoke.   
“I, uh, hope you don’t mind. You looked pretty uncomfortable.”  
I opened my eyes all the way and sat up. A dark canvas utility jacket fell between the seat and my side. I looked down and picked it up, ignoring the pain in my arms.   
“This is yours?”  
He didn’t move, just licked his lips nervously.   
“Yeah, your head was… you looked like you needed a pillow. It was all I had.”  
I pull the jacket onto my lap and ran my hands over the fabric. I didn’t want to say or think the obvious: Dean Winchester was one hell of a kind man.  
“You must be a very skilled driver, to place a makeshift pillow beneath my head whilst navigating the daunting Washington traffic.”  
He is quiet for so long I start to think he doesn’t plan on replying, but suddenly Doctor Dean looks over at me and his eyes are illuminated and his face is a patchwork of shadow and light and the weird overcast sunlight falling through the windshield spattered with raindrops hits his eyes and they are the color of grass and the shadows beneath make him look all the more intriguing – light and dark – oh, he was all kinds of light and dark.   
“I pulled over.” He clarified, “You were sleeping pretty hard.”  
I look at him dubiously.   
“You pulled the car over to put a jacket under my head?”  
He stares at the road.  
“Yeah,”  
I sigh.  
I don’t want to feel. I don’t want to feel. I don’t want to think about feeling.  
“That was kind,” I grudgingly admit, “but unnecessary. I’ve slept on the streets before you must realize.”  
His jaw tightens and I feel sorry for the wheel in his grasp.   
That familiar frown crawls across my face.   
What does he care?  
“Yeah, well, you’re not sleeping on the street, technically.”  
I narrowed my eyes but remained silent, watching the road with him. I realized that we were far out of Seattle and entering some forested area. I didn’t recognize anything.   
“Where are we going?”  
Dean doesn’t bother to look at me.  
“To my place – I thought you knew that.”  
The corner of my mouth turns up as I resist the urge to sass him.   
“Where the hell do you live?”  
That was the first time I saw him give the first semblance of a real smile.   
“I have an old farmhouse thirty or so miles from the nearest gas station.”  
I rolled my eyes.   
“Wonderful. So, basically, this is going to be one of those B horror movies?”  
He chuckled and I realized I enjoyed the sound.  
“Oh yeah, you’ll be utterly terrified the entire time.”  
Someone else might actually have had the sense to start being paranoid at that point… but me? All I could do was grin and think that going with the peculiar doctor to his remote farmhouse was going to be the highlight of my peculiar life.  
“How much longer until we get there?”  
He looked over at me and grinned.   
“Maybe five, ten minutes… are you hungry?”  
I was starving, but it wasn’t the first time.   
“I could go for something,”  
Dean pulled onto the feeder and followed the tree line, our speed decreasing.   
“I’ll make you some soup at the house.”  
I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.   
“You don’t have to-“  
“Shut up, Cas. Just… stop fighting me so much.” He cut off, carding his fingers through his hair.   
His tone wiggled beneath my skin, and flowed out into what veins were not severed.   
I felt guilty and more than undeserving of his generosity. I wasn’t accustomed to this side of humanity and was not quite sure how to properly reciprocate.  
“I’m sorry, Dean. This is all new to me. No one – well… it’s new.”  
He looked over at me as we turned onto a narrow road surrounded by trees on each side. They met and twined in the middle and formed a sort of tunnel. The effect was surreal, magical even.   
“It won’t always feel this way, Cas. Just give me some time and… let me take care of you.”  
The sharp shattered pieces of me poked through the surface and struck out, panicked at the prospect of Dean getting close enough to see how damaged I was, and how little I had to offer in return. Words were my weapon of choice.   
“Right… Because you think you can fix me?”  
Hurt flashed through his eyes and was gone almost in the same instant it had appeared. He turned stiffly back to the road and I felt like an asshole.   
“Because I can’t fix myself,” He murmured, so still I had to look over and find him tight lipped and red-cheeked to be sure he had spoken at all.   
We remained silent for the rest of the drive.

~

~Dean~  
As Long as You Love Me – Sleeping at Last  
Stitches – Shawn Mendes  
They Don’t Know Us – Borgeous (Piano Version)  
Ghost Town – Adam Lambert

I stretched my arms above me as I got out of the Impala, working out the kinks from the long drive. Suddenly I remembered Cas’ arms and how he would be put-out to open his door. Hurrying around the car, I found him staring at the front of the farmhouse Bobby had left me with the same unreadable expression he’d worn at the hospital and when the conversation went sideways in the car. As I opened the passenger door, he stared past me still looking at the house, transfixed. I took reached out and took his elbow, easing him to his feet, expecting one of those venomous glances to come the entire time but never received one. He was simply quiet, more so than I had yet to experience.   
I glanced back at the house nervously, searching for something that might startle someone who was not accustomed to its worn but maintained façade and was at a loss. Everything seemed in place.  
“Is everything okay?” I asked, looking back at Cas.   
He slowly turned to me and his eyes had taken on a look of one that is haunted – I recognize it from my reflection in every mirror I pass.   
“This is your place?” Castiel asks softly, but his voice jolts me out of my personal musing.   
My eyebrows rise ever so slightly.  
I did another once over.  
“Home sweet home,”  
He takes a step forward, and then another, gazing around at the trees, the muddy corn fields I never had time or will to tend, and beyond, to the lake in the distance that was always a little cold.   
Without taking his eyes off the house, he spoke, tone slightly husky.   
“And you’re sure you want me here?”  
I felt my face screw up.   
“Huh? Of course, I wouldn’t have invited you.”  
He turned from the house and gazed at me, and I felt it – his soul deep stare that I couldn’t escape.  
“You have a lovely home, Dr. Winchester.”  
The weird look returned and I dug for the key to open the trunk to retrieve my bag. I went around and hid behind the metal lid; too much going on in my brain for me to logically sort through. One thing I was certain of – this Dr. Winchester thing was not going to happen for two or however many weeks. It was just plain weird.   
Taking a deep breath I worked up the nerve to speak again, calling out –   
“It’s just Dean, Cas. And I, uh… I’m sort of taking a break myself.”  
I couldn’t see his face, so if he had a visible reaction, I missed it, hiding.   
After a moment or two cursing myself for cowardice – I’d lived in warzones for Christ’s sake - I slammed the lid closed and returned to his side.  
“So, ready for a little R&R?”  
Cas took his gaze slowly off of my home and laid it onto me, then the front porch, the door, and finally, nodded.   
~  
Once we were inside, I flipped the light switch and excused myself to go turn on a little heat, explaining that since I usually slept at the hospital, I tended to keep the electricity and A/C off. Cas nodded and started off slowly along the hall, studying the pictures spattered over the walls – some mine, but most belonging to Bobby – and I hurried down to light the furnace in the basement.   
When I returned, Cas was standing with a picture of Lisa, Ben and I before I had left for the war. He held it close, lips turned down.  
I felt myself frown, wishing I could read his mind.   
Choosing instead to remain silent, I walked to the kitchen where habit or instinct took over and I began to automatically start another pot of coffee. The scent and sound soothed me with the promise of another dose of caffeine in sight. I leaned against the counter, mug in hand, waiting. Not soon after the machine began to rumble its last, I heard chair legs scrape across the linoleum accompanied by the squeak of an old wooden chair as my strangely magnetic guest settled into the corner spot at the table.  
I turn around. He’s still holding the picture. I know it should bother me, but for some reason I cannot find a name for, it doesn’t.   
Castiel’s movements, his words, the way he cuts me with each word out of his mouth, has me in need of more, and the more I get the more I want. I get it into my head to make it one of my goals to make him smile. To see it, maybe even capture it on camera so I can print it out and add it to the framed collection lining every wall in this house of memories.  
At least I would have that much when he left…   
“Do you like soup?”  
He gave me another one of those silent nods, staring out the window.  
I wanted him to speak, to hear his voice like velvet over steel, but it was enough. I was tired, and Cas was, well, I didn’t know… lost in thought.   
Or so I’d thought.  
“Where are they - your family?”  
The stream of coffee pouring into my mug suffered as I took a moment to decide how best I should answer. Honesty was always the preferred policy where I was concerned… I figured that didn’t stop counting now.   
I face the wall as I answer, preparing the coffee to my taste.  
“They uh, Lisa, my wife, started seeing someone while I was… over there… right about the same time she stopped seeing a future for us. A couple months after that, I got back, found some papers in an empty house. They, uh, were already signed and notarized, all of that crap… you know, to make it all official.”  
Castiel turns away from the window.   
“They left you?”  
The topic makes my skin itch in a way I don’t think I can scratch. Or drink or shower or screw away… it just stays, mocking, taunting, that there was nothing here or over there for them to stay for.   
A hand goes through my hair and I set down the coffee to gather ingredients for his soup.   
“I guess you could say that. She said I left them. Either way, they’re gone; I’m here and now…”  
I trailed off looking for the chicken broth.   
I heard Castiel sigh.   
“And now you invite suicidal transients home.”  
I straightened up and turned to look at him.   
“Look, I don’t have a passing degree in psychology, and I’m not going to pretend that I do, but I think it would be best if you at least tried to stop degrading yourself every other sentence.”  
The look on his face screams he is about to argue or retort something spiteful, and I brace myself for it because I’m all out of fight today. I walk over to the table and bend over so that our eyes are level, leaning down, palms flush against the stained wood.   
There are a few things we are about to set straight. And this shit has nothing to do with Lisa, Ben, or who or what I was or am. This is all Cas.   
“You weren’t born this way, you didn’t grow up with these thoughts or feelings – hell, you didn’t even ask for them. They’re not your fault, Cas. This isn’t you, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner we can get past this.”  
He looks like he might kick my ass - slashed arms, despite my extra fifty or so pounds, weapons training and all. He also looks like he might break down completely.   
I decide it’s a wonderful time to make that soup.   
Returning to the counter, I collect the available ingredients for chicken soup and pull a cutting board from the cabinet. In half a minute, a carrot is in pieces, followed by a celery stick. I pour the broth into a pot and wait for it to boil.   
“You said we.”  
His voice startles me, and the coffee I’d been sipping splatters over my scrubs.   
Immediately, apologies start flooding from his lips and he’s on his feet right there beside me, trying to clean up my mess with a dishtowel. I kneel down and meet him close to the floor.  
“Cas,”   
He looks up, eyes full of worry.  
I reach out before my tired mind realizes what the hell I’m doing and I rest my hand on his right shoulder. I watch his eyes go wide.   
“It’s coffee, not acid. It’s fine.”  
I drag him to his feet and toss the towel into the sink. After that, the top part of my scrubs follows.   
“I said we because we are going to be doing this together. Whatever that means or takes. I don’t give up, and I’m not about to give it a shot now.”  
The broth is boiling. I walk over and add the vegetables and a bag of dried egg noodles. It’s going to be chicken soup without chicken because the kitchen is in dire need of groceries. I inform him of this and he just nods, all his sarcasm simply gone. I wonder where it went or why it left.   
It doesn’t matter. He’s here, I’m caring for him.  
I’m not alone in the house I used to share with people I loved. 

 

~Castiel~  
Wildest Dreams – Simply Three, Alyson Stoner  
Stitches – Shawn Mendes  
Fear – Blue October

As Dean moved around the kitchen in nothing but his scrubs and socks, he spoke with the resigned ease of someone who was used to telling a tragic story more than one time. It took so much effort to keep my eyes off of him longer than I kept them on him, I couldn’t stop the worry he would notice – and I would count the seconds during the times we spoke, just to be sure.   
I glanced down at the framed photo in my hands. The woman appeared nice enough. Perhaps that was the problem. She looked like someone Dean Winchester should be living in this charming home with, and the boy… didn’t share many of Dean’s features I noted, but that didn’t mean much.   
He’d had a family and they had been ripped away. I looked at the muscles corded over his back as he stirred the soup – my soup. He hadn’t turned to the streets. He’d turned to a gun, or a scalpel and a lab-coat to save the people like me who made the wrong choices. I’d never had a role model, but I decided then and there, that if I ever did, he would have been someone a hell of a lot like Dean Winchester.  
“I’m going to have to go to the grocery store soon, there’s not much here to eat and all of the delivery places in town don’t come out this far. Think you will be up for a trip in a couple days?”  
I nod yet again because I don’t trust my own fucking voice around this man who is everything I wish I could be, and instead stare at the mist hanging over the abandoned corn fields. Everything here is lovely in its own fashion – lovely and abandoned.   
~  
When Dean was satisfied with the soup, he ladled some into two flowered bowls and set one before me, coming back a moment later with a plate of little rolls which he set between us.   
I looked warily at the bread and he laughed, dropping his spoon into his bowl.   
“Don’t worry; it’s the kind you bake from the freezer.”  
I gazed at it suspiciously but dipped the corner of the small loaf into my bowl where it began to absorb the broth.   
Dean picked up his spoon and blew gently on the steaming liquid.   
My eyes fastened onto his puckered lips and snapped away like a rubber band when he looked at me. Without the seductive blowing to distract me, I took a bite of the broth-soaked bread. It burned my mouth but I was certain I deserved it.   
He looked at me expectantly.  
“Well? What do you think?”  
I thought about my answer, and the taste.   
“Better than anything I’ve had recently. And… not to mention the first home cooked meal I’ve had prepared for me as an adult.”  
He frowned, but the intensity was damaged by his lack of clothing. I was beginning to find it hard to eat even though I was starving.   
Dean must have noticed one of the million or so furtive glances I stole at his uncovered body.   
“I have a few extra clothes upstairs that you’re welcome to until we go back to Seattle next week,”  
I dropped my spoon, hunger, desire, forgotten.   
“We’re going to Seattle? I thought we were going to the grocery store?”  
He laughed, apparently not noticing my panic.  
“Relax, Baby’s good for more than one trip. Besides, I’m sure you want to grab some things from your house. If you like it here, I was thinking that maybe you could stay longer… if you wanted to.”   
He didn’t look at me during the last invitation, just swirled his cooling soup into a miniature whirlpool in his bowl.   
Honestly, I never wanted to go back to Seattle. I wanted to live here, and wear his clothes and eat whatever food we had and talk about how life had screwed us. I wanted him to see there was more to me than what I labeled myself – hell, more than what the world called those like me. Even though I knew people like Dean did not involve themselves in any personal way with people like me. And that thought made me want all of the things I had no damn right to.  
I wanted him, at this table, with those green eyes and sex hair and voice that sounded rough even when it was saying gentle things.  
I wanted it all. So what did I do?  
I agree to go back to Seattle.   
Dean pointed his spoon at me. “Finish your soup and we’ll go upstairs. I need to show you your room and where the bathroom is.”  
~

We stood at Dean’s closet and I was trying really, really hard not to look around his room. Looking for clues about who this man was as a person, but everything I found relayed very little of his inner self. Mumbling something, he dug around until he found an old concert t-shirt that was only a size too big for me. I stared at the front of it.   
“Classic rock fan?”  
He didn’t even look back at me as he pulled the closet doors shut.  
“Hell yes.”  
I laughed and nodded.   
Dean pulled out a pair of navy cotton lounge pants from a chest of drawers topped with more framed pictures – these of Dean and a man who resembled him. I let my eyes drift over the images. Dean and the unnamed man, Dean as a child with a gorgeous blond woman who shared most of the same features, Dean with a man that resembled the other with him in the first pictures… I was looking at Dean’s family. His blood family... Part of me felt like I was intruding, part of me wanted to ask questions.   
He handed the pants to me. He had a couple of inches on me, but they would still fit.  
“What do you like?”  
I raised my eyebrows as I tried to recall what we were talking about.  
“What sort of music do you like?” Dean clarified.   
I shifted from one foot to the other. No one had ever asked me those sorts of questions. And until now, I hadn’t really thought about it.  
“Old music, like chamber music, mostly, but I listen to Elvis on occasion.”  
Dean nods but I can tell he’s turning over my answer, analyzing it like a physical thing. Like I’ve analyzed his personal space.  
“I can dig Elvis.” He replies with a grin.   
My stomach seems to be caught in my throat.   
“Come on, I’ll show you where your room is. I think you’re gonna like it.”  
Following him out of his bedroom, I noticed it is filled with pictures of people more than anything else, but of those photos, most looked at least ten years old or more.  
How long had he been alone?   
Why did I feel like Dean’s story didn’t begin to decline when Lisa left him?  
We walked down the hall in silence, with Dean pointing out the single bathroom on the way to what would be my room. He insisted I was welcome to anything in his home, shampoo, water, clothes, and utilities. Looking at his bare back, I had a feeling by the end of the week I would be finding those a lot less appealing than I did at the moment.  
He stopped at the room at the end of the hallway and opened the door, beckoning me inside. I slowly walked in after him and stopped, shocked into stillness. Windows filled three fourths of the walls – all except the wall behind the headboard of the bed which had been fashioned into a series of shelves.   
All of which were covered in books…  
There was a lamp built into the wall for night reading. A chair, table and floor lamp occupied the window nook. An old tapestry blanket had been thrown over the back of the chair.   
I felt my eyes burn. I couldn’t stop staring.   
Dean walked around, turning the lamps on to fight the overcast darkness.   
“There are a couple other rooms I have if you are uncomfortable with the windows. I was just thinking on the drive how you had mentioned that you enjoyed reading, and being away from people. I thought about this room, how you would have your own personal space and… well, thought it would be great.”  
I turned to him, wanting to say so many things but limited to:  
“I’d like to see the psych ward try to match this.”  
He smiles a new smile – one I’ve not seen - for me.   
“I was never going to let the city take you, Cas.”  
He laid my borrowed clothes at the foot of my bed, and stares down at him. It’s clear there is something he wants to say.   
“You should know… I did a few… things… after you agreed to come here. One of the more… illegal… was going back your chart and… doctoring a few of the facts.”  
I looked up sharply.  
“Which facts? Why?”  
He ran a hand through his hair and looked out one of the floor to ceiling windows.   
“I said you were stable, lapsing off of some meds you were had been on, so they wouldn’t come looking for you. Don’t get me wrong, you’re not a prisoner here. If you are upset about me lying, I will take you back to Seattle right now. I just… I had to try to... save you. The only way I saw to do that was to think outside of the box.”  
My expression softened and I understood. He was lonely, and he needed to help me in a selfish way that, in the end, cancelled out the selfishness. He saved me because he couldn’t save himself.   
This dusty house… the pictures… it all made sense.   
Every single piece.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

~Dean~  
Colors – Halsey  
Mind Over Matter – Pvris  
You’ll Be Okay – Michael Schulte (Acoustic)

The gentle murmurs of a television whispered from somewhere below in the house. The volume was set low, carefully adjusted so that it wouldn’t be a bother, yet loud enough to hear.   
I opened my eyes, remembering the last events that had occurred before I’d collapsed onto my bed, as I was and slept. I recalled showing Cas his room and being rewarded with the look of disbelief on his face, the new light in his eyes. I’d told him to rest; he’d thought that was a good idea as he’d eyed the bed with an odd hunger and excitement. I’d shown him where my room was and told him I’d leave the door open making him promise to let me know if he needed me or anything. He had agreed and I couldn’t find any hint of falsehood in his eyes or in his voice. Satisfied, I’d gone to my own room and listened to him explore and murmur thoughts aloud until I’d fallen asleep to the sound of his quiet musings and revelations. 

~

All I heard now was the sound of television.  
I sat up, scrubbed the sleep from my eyes and pulled myself into a relatively vertical position.  
I kicked the sneakers off and grabbed some lounge pants from the dresser and a t-shirt from another drawer. I hurried down the hall to the bathroom and rushed through a quick shower. All in all, it couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes. Dressing quickly, I descended the stairs with a quiet hurry and padded down the hallway, scared of what I would find, or of what I wouldn’t.   
Cas sat on the couch, knees pulled up to his chest watching a documentary about bees, or something to that effect, from what I could tell. While he’s caught on the narrator’s every word, I stand still in the doorway and allow myself a moment to observe him unhindered - His hair stuck out in little half curls as he nibbled on his nails, so attentive to a program that most would flip past, it sort of makes my chest tighten, knowing what truth there is about him and his journey.   
Walking slowly into the living room, I crossed in front of the television on my way to the recliner beside his side of the couch, knocking my knee against the coffee table and tripping towards the glass surface.   
My mind was still hazy from exhaustion.  
I couldn’t react in time. Instead, I braced my body for the pain of crashing through the plate glass, when suddenly Cas’ arms shoot out, halting my fall and jerking me away from the danger completely. And instantly, panic sets in - not for what might have happened to my person, but to the one who continually saved me in ways that defied description.  
The left side of my brain knew the force of my weight against his stiches must have reopened in the very least, a few. Doing a quick mental survey of all of the medical supplies I had here at the house, and knew I could treat such an injury, but I would need to take him into town in the morning for Rufus to inspect.  
I lunged to my feet and took his arms in mine, cradling the uninjured side against me before thinking better and folding them back towards him slightly above his heart.   
Feeling Castiel’s eyes on me was akin to feeling an actual weight. The man could literally pin you in place with those baby blues. He did this as my hands held onto him despite the fact he clearly could hold his own limbs. They followed me as I eased down onto the sofa beside him. To my surprise, he didn’t try to pull away, only continued to stare at me.  
Each movement I made felt calculated, constructed for him. It was maddening and a more than a little thrilling. Despite all of my training, my hands began to shake.  
Cas is the first to speak.  
“Are you alright?”   
I look down at the tear in my pants and the angry skin beneath, remembering much angrier wounds and burned clothing when I’d pulled my broken body through the shattered window of an upturned Humvee.   
“Yeah, I think I’ll survive.”  
His eyes locked onto the bit of skin through the tear in my pants and he quickly turned away.   
They way he’d looked at me then… had my pulse beating double time.   
I cleared my throat because I would not allow my body to reveal what only his eyes could do to me.   
“Your arm- did you pull any stitches? I probably need to check it out,”  
Those eyes moved up to my lips and crawled up to mine.   
His pupils were dark and wide, blown.  
Shit.   
“It stings but nothing feels… undone. I think I’ll survive.”  
I was still holding his arms.   
“Cas… if you’ve done anything to the wound –“  
He half smiles at me and my mind goes blank. So easily emptied of everything that feels important… until he looked at me with those eyes and that smirk… and I’m just so done with everything that is not Cas.  
“I know, I know: let you fix it.”  
I nod, confused at my reactions to him. It’s not like I’ve never found certain men attractive before, or even been romantically involved with any… but this… with Cas… just felt more… profound.  
He looks down at his arms in my hands, tracing the curves and lines where our skin met, and when he reached the end, he’d return to the start.   
I shake my head trying to unsettle the way I kept falling under the spell of his movements, the unexpected thoughtfulness in the little gestures he made.   
I grab a throw pillow from behind my back and place it in his lap, instructing him to lay both arms on it and to relax, rattling off information about blood pressure and heart rates, if only to comfort my chaotic mind.   
He nods, still watching me work on him.   
Twisting into a very uncomfortable position, I reach down to the table beside the couch, open the magnetic door and dig around until I feel the plastic edge of the extended first aid kit I keep there. There are about half a dozen scattered throughout the house. Call it paranoia, or intuition, but in this moment, I didn’t care which.   
Finding the scissors, I cut away the gauze as Cas watches me, with his intense and quiet gaze, and he’s entirely silent, whether resigned or something else, like happy with the potential self-harm and the lucky turn of events that he might have reopened those damn gashes on his arms… but if I look up from under my lashes, I don’t buy that he is thinking death right now, because I’m not stupid and the look in his eyes – well, let’s just say the last time someone looked at me that way, I got laid. Call it an educated guess, but there was something unmistakably physical in all of this treatment that had crap to do with me treating wounds of his.   
Mentally, I punch myself in the face. I am administering aid not pick up lines, so I shut off my brain and hold my breath as the injuries are revealed. My first thought is light – I need more of it. I reach back around and switch on the lamp for more light. The illumination shows me a sight I have come to hate– Castiel’s blood. Around the jagged line there is some crimson leaking through where he has torn the skin around the base of a few stitches, especially enflaming the areas where they are anchored, but to my relief there is no sign of the beginnings of infection or anything harmful at the moment aside from the trauma from gripping me tight and raising me up.   
Taking up a bottle of saline, I tear open a clean gauze pad and pour some of the solution onto the fabric, cleaning and hating these damned marks and their meanings. I dab at them softly, double checking each knot as I move along towards his wrist.  
Cas suddenly sucks in a breath.   
I glance up and find pain in his eyes, amazed at how still and silent he is, or the fact he can tolerate the sight of his own wounds.   
As if he is reading my thought pattern, he speaks suddenly.  
“They look much… cleaner… than the last time I saw them,” He murmurs, staring at the wounds he created.   
I look up at him, pausing my saline and gauze routine.  
Is it me or is there a hint of remorse in his tone?  
I can’t stand the thought of him as anything but alright, anything but somewhere close to happy… So sappy words start spilling out of my damned mouth before I can choke them down.  
“Shit happens, Cas. We all have limits. This was what happened when you found yours.”  
I feel his eyes land on me like a physical impact. They stay there and mine remain and my hands pause on his arms, protecting, prepared to stop anything that rises up against him.   
Cas clears his throat and looks down at our hands and arms and the blood and gauze on the pillow between us. Any onlooker would swear he was searching for a sign among the torn packages and red stains.   
“Dean, I never… thought I would say this, or even feel it - especially after the past couple of days, but… I want to thank you.”  
I don’t move. I don’t take my hands away like a good doctor would. I lean closer and brush the cotton pad down the side of his arm, wiping away the excess saline, savoring the contact.  
“It’s what I do, Cas. Saving you was just a perk.”  
I hear his breath come uneven again. I narrow my eyes to see better in the shallow light, thinking I’ve hurt him but instead find there are tears in his eyes.   
“No one ever… ever treated me with kindness, or forgiveness, before…” He confesses, breaking apart in front of me, in my hands. Something that is so entirely unacceptable…  
I paused and meet his eyes, knowing I am leaping head first into one hell of a black hole… Recklessness was sort of a personality trait. Impulsive was right there on the list behind it.  
Reaching out, I slide my palm across the light beard growing over his jaw, and ease north into his dark hair surprised at the satiny feel and the way it curls perfectly around my fingertips and I urge him forwards – all movements slow and soft, encouraging, and maybe a little bit transparent if I think about the whole thing closer.  
I close the distance- the damned gulf that separates us… and the last thing I see are his jewel colored eyes slipping closed in mutual agreement to break, to shatter that last barrier of doctor and patient into something that is closer to salvation. 

~

Kissing Cas felt like someone had opened my fisted hands and set a grenade in each palm… and in my head and inside my chest. That person then stepped back behind a safety wall and tugged a string that pulled all the pins out as our lips met. The bombs each detonated at exactly the same instant. The sensation seared through me and I was back there, pinned in place, and this was the relief that came when eyes fixated and pain stopped for good.   
I’ll tell you a secret: There are only two real pain killers in life. And I’m talking pain that makes your mind forget the names of your family, who you are as a person, hell, what reality even is. There is only that pain and you, and it fucking owns you. The first pain killer should be obvious at this point, because it’s the great escape, Death himself. Your damn pain can’t touch you when he takes over.   
But… sometimes there is the second, it’s harder to come by and much more effective, kinda like a mental chemo or maybe a sniper that has your back. It has similar symptoms to pain… but it is the farthest thing from pain. It’s all hands and skin and lips and half thought words that may or may not mean something, and you go along with it, because what that other is offering up is something like grace, like the light at the end of the tunnel, only, you don’t have to die to feel it.  
By now, you should be able to guess what the second pain killer is too - love. It can be definite or just the possibility, but it will take you places pain can’t follow. And now, my mind was nearly always over there… but when Castiel’s lips touched mine, the memories didn’t hurt. I couldn’t feel a damn thing… because he was everything I felt.   
I expected hesitation and in return I received hunger, not even desire, but a desperation that matched my own. Our lips moved urgently, sucking and drawing as tongues traced hungry mouths. I felt his fingers curl around mine, and I held the back of his neck with one hand; twining his hair between each of my fingers. Cas moaned softly into my mouth. I brushed my thumb across the pink shell of his ear. The sound backs me into a corner, echoes in my brain… I can’t do it anymore. My preservation instincts shatter… I drop the gun I use to kill pain and I just…  
Let the grenades blow me apart. 

~Castiel~  
Coming Down – Halsey  
Give You What You Like – Avril Lavigne*  
Ashes of Eden – Breaking Benjamin  
Horizon – Luna Blake

 

My heart pounded hard so hard it hurt, but I couldn’t – wouldn’t – stop this.   
I leaned forwards and traced the tip of my tongue along the curve of Dean’s mouth, and was rewarded with his body pushing closer to mine. His lips took my bottom and sucked at it almost thoughtfully, before he laps at it with the end of his tongue. He tilted his head and deepened the kiss. I couldn’t help the moan that escaped into the dark of the room.  
Dean Winchester was a good soldier. He was also an outstanding doctor. But when it came to kissing, Dean was a god. Each movement of his artist’s dream lips made me feel like this was the first time I’d been kissed. And all of this touching and panting and gasping, it was all an art he had created and perfected; I simply existed to be his canvas.   
His body tensed and he opened his eyes.  
They were nothing if not a pair of dark emeralds under the lights of the television.   
I felt dizzy - like I was dreaming, but I knew that couldn’t be true… nothing I could dream could ever compare to this.   
“Put your arms on my shoulders, Cas.” He growled, breaking me out of my thoughts.  
I trembled at the rasp and the sound, obeying.  
As soon as my arms were safely out of the way, Dean reached down, fingers grasping, digging into my back and hips and lifting me onto his lap. I settled into all of the empty spaces of Dean’s body and sucked in a gasp of surprise at the way our bodies fit together.   
Dean slammed against my chest flush as soon as the sound left my mouth. He took my lips again, sucking again at each, paying every part of my mouth its share of attention until my thoughts were something that felt very, very far away.   
He turned us, using solely the muscles of his upper body as he moved our twined forms around so the couch supported his back.   
Dean’s arms held me tight and protective as he leaned back into it and pulled me into him, his arms palms rubbing my back slowly.   
Everything was so slow… that suddenly it occurred to some part of my brain… because, while his arousal was clearly evident against my stomach, he didn’t want to simply fuck me.   
That was the moment I began to see the world in new colors.   
Dean Winchester… wanted me.  
I bent my fingertips, careful to keep my arms still and untouched, feeling the points of his sandy blond hair pass through my fingertips.  
I would be healed.   
Dean turned his head and lowered his mouth to nip my neck; trailing feathery kisses down my neck to the collar of the t-shirt I still wore.  
I threw my head back, baring my throat and almost in the same instant, one hand snaked up and held my head as his lips drew against the skin of my throat, over and over, down and up, up and down, and my breath came harder to draw.   
Thought and sensation replaced my skin and bones and this moment was the culmination of all I needed and had needed.   
I was not temporary.   
This was not temporary.   
I felt it in his kiss, in the way his hands held me against his body, stroking, squeezing.   
Actions speak louder than words… None of the johns had ever touched me this way, no one had. This felt… natural.   
I leaned into him and kissed just a little harder, pressed just a little bit more across the lines that had separated us before; pleased when I felt him grow harder and press desperately against my abdomen. I pressed my hips down gently, testing, memorizing the sound of his throaty groan and the way he threw his head back against the couch, eyes squeezed tight.   
Leaning down, I kissed the definitive line of his jaw. Dean shifted his hands down to support my waist as I began to rock my hips unhurriedly, rubbing our erections against one another.  
Beneath me, Dean struggled for breath.   
I leaned forward and kissed him pressing my hips harder into his, wanting, needing that friction and the release it would undoubtedly bring. Astonishingly, Dean rose to meet me, even with my weight full pushing him down into the worn out couch cushions.   
He was stronger than I’d given him credit for; and was far from the burned out shell of a man I’d believed him to be. There was a fire there, simmering right beneath the surface…  
From half-masted eyes, Dean Winchester watched me as I ground my hips into him. Reaching up and taking my face in his rough hands only to hold my face as his eyes clutched me much the way his hands did – and those grass green gems caressed every line and plane of my face… with a hand that had the power to save or to kill and had more than likely done just a little more than its share of both.   
There was an unspoken agreement between us then as we rolled hard onto one another… And I gave my consent, wholly and fully, just for the record, if anyone still was keeping one.   
Pushing down hard, I drove Dean’s his erection against the seat of my pants. His eyes slammed shut as he bucked up against me. Reclining onto his chest, I rained kisses down on Dean’s lips, marveling at the fullness of them as I progressed on. For a while, I was convinced Dean was content to sit here and kiss and grind, but the moment I exhaled his name on a breath, his hands turned vise-like on my hips, so hard and possessive, I knew he would leave marks he didn’t mean.   
Dean slammed our bodies together, crushing himself against me.   
I couldn’t breathe.   
He reached past the elastic band of my pants… and my breath did that thing where it didn’t come… as his fingers crept down until they reached my hardened length.   
I moaned shamelessly, thinking all of the things this particular man could do to my body… Dean growled my name and nipped at my neck, kissing the spot as soon as his teeth released while his hand squeezed the head of my erection, hard. Swiping his palm over the tender flesh, he stole my breath for the thousandth time since I’d first seen him, and I’m trying so hard to remember the rhythm of breath, but it’s not so simple when Dean’s touching me in ways I never thought he would.   
His hand released me entirely and I cried out, needing it on me, around me, and suddenly it was back, wet with my desire; gliding up and down in a pace that matched our rolling hips.  
I was so close to losing myself in him. I would give anything, everything…  
I threw myself into his grip, once, twice until the mental and physical sensations drove all control from me. I shoved against his grip and the moment Dean’s thumb pressed down over the tip of my erection, there was no barrier that could stop me from shaking apart. But for the first time, it was alright, I was alright… Dean’s arms were around me as I cried out, shoving my body frantically against his, needing to be closer and closer, and he must have sensed my urgency.   
“I’ve got you, Cas. I’ve got you.”  
I whimpered, unprepared for the intensity of the eruption - My mouth fell open, but no sound emerged. I squeezed my eyes shut, still seeing him in the middle of the darkness, and he was in every cell, in every breath I fought for.  
Dean’s arms were barriers around me even as I was exploding into a million little pieces, each etched with his name.  
“Shhh, I’ve got you… I’m not letting go.”  
His lips were on my neck, forehead... gently urging me to let go…   
I burst apart again into numberless pieces… and each and every single one belonged to Dean Winchester.

 

~Dean~  
Somebody to Die For – Hurts  
We Might Fall – Ryan Star  
Change for Love – Little Sea  
The Emotion - BORNS

 

I find myself looking back into Castiel’s eyes with parted lips wet from too much of my tongue wanting to replace my hands. Watching Cas orgasm in nothing but my grasp had me at the brink of what sanity I possessed, but I wanted to see it all again. The last deep blue gleam of the television light reflecting off his eyes before he closed them in rapture; his moans and whimpers – It was all I could do not to pin him against the couch and rip my clothes off of his body… with my teeth.   
He smiles at me - A small, shy, movement that is the precursor to his extending fingers brushing the hair at the base of my neck.   
Cas leans forward and kisses me, lingering over my lips as if he can’t pull himself back. I rub my hands over his shoulders and kiss him back, putting something of who I am into the motion of my lips make against his.  
He pulls back suddenly, eyes wide.   
I can’t help stroking his cheek.   
“What is it?” My voice is so soft, I hardly recognize it.   
He runs his hands along the waistline of my pants.   
“You haven’t come,”  
He looks worried.   
I can only smile in return.   
“Cas, what I just saw on your face, knowing I did that to you… was… awesome.”  
He frowns.  
“But you need release, Dean.”  
I continue stroking his face because I can’t fucking stop. I know what’s happening and I will/cannot fucking stop it.  
“I’ll take care of it, Cas. Don’t worry,”  
He inclines his head in acknowledgment while in the background, David Attenborough is droning on about bees and honey. It’s so sexy I can’t stand it.   
Cas reaches out and dips his fingers beneath the hem of my shirt, skirting them along my abdomen. I shiver and grow harder. Biting my lip, I meet his eyes, which are torn between me and the rise in my lap.   
“Take it off, Dean.” He commands and his tone has me shivering for all new reasons. I nod, but pause in mid-motion.   
“Cas, I, uh, I’m not physically… whole… just so you know. When I was over there… there was an accident and I was injured. Almost died, actually… so promise… you won’t be freaked out by what you see, okay?”  
His face was a book written in another language and I was illiterate.   
Turns out it didn’t matter.   
Reaching forward, Cas lifts my t-shirt up revealing my stomach, chest and shoulders, and then chucks it to the other side of the couch.   
I sit still and wait for his reaction, my erection slightly diminishing with each passing second and the thought of rejection.  
Cas scoots closer and his fingertips brush my chest. Instinct or something has me closing my eyes at the contact. He trails his index finger from the strange, almost palm shaped burn on my shoulder to the bullet scars and finally, down to my lower stomach where Alistair had nearly killed me when I’d come home – with a knife to the stomach. For some reason, I survived.   
I was beginning to feel like maybe there was a reason for it.   
Cas leaned forward and kissed the bullet scars; his lips warm and soft on the angry skin.  
His name groaned out of me and he looked up, meeting my gaze and gently pressed me back so I was lying on the couch. Bending down to my chest again, Cas starts kissing a trail to my navel and lower, and lower, and I swore I would die from all of the blood loss because of my damned erection.   
I clear my throat though my voice still emerges hoarse.  
“Cas… you don’t have to… This isn’t why I brought you here. “  
He kisses me higher – in the center of my chest – and swings his eyes up to mine lazily.   
Dear God, he’s got the sexy thing down pat.  
“I know.”  
He returns to his kisses.   
It is increasingly difficult to form coherent thought or speech.   
“I don’t want to be… like everyone else. I don’t want to take advantage of you. In any way,”  
That does it, because he stops, rises and contemplates me.   
I want to bury my head in my hands, and to my disgust, I want to bury something else in some part of Cas.   
I hate myself for what are probably the same thoughts all of those men in his life have had – wanting to feel him around them – using his body until it wasn’t even his anymore.   
I turn away from Cas. I can’t stand that thought. I can’t stand my own thoughts as I’m lying here wanting him more than I want my next daybreak.   
He lays flush against my chest without preamble, startling me at the familiarity of the contact. I jostle and still, bracing my hands on his sides unthinkingly, doing everything I can to keep him from falling.   
One gauze wrapped arm snakes forwards and five slim fingers stroke the stubble across my face as had I caressed his.   
“Dean, you are nothing like them. I want to thank you… for more than you could possibly imagine... and right now, I want to give you a fraction of what you have given to me.”  
And like someone snapped their fingers, I’m hard again.   
Cas sits up on my thighs, drawing my pants down under my erection and I watch him, transfixed, some part of my brain screaming at me to do something, but I can only watch Cas as his thumb brushes over my head and my thoughts just… stop.   
There is only us and these bodies and the points where we meet like lines on a map – breaking apart only to come back together somewhere not so far away.   
He tightens his grasp, intense concentration the mask he wears now. A talented finger dances around my head before Cas wipes the pre-come that is pooling there. He brings it to his lips, swollen from so much kissing, and pops the finger into his mouth, closing those baby blues and I would swear to any being wanting my soul that that one motion was the hottest damn thing I’d ever seen.   
Scooting down he parts my thighs and positions himself between them and draping his damaged arms over my legs. He bends to my erection and laps at the slit, tongue twisting and swirling around me in ways that has my head spinning and I’m making noises I didn’t know I could.  
I’m fucking whimpering.   
When Cas draws me into his mouth, I want to cry out, maybe even do. He makes a satisfied hum and I can’t stop my hands from returning to his messy hair, gently urging him to do what he is already doing so well.   
“Cas, oh God…”  
He smirks up at me, that sarcastic bastard, lips wet from sucking me.  
“That’s right, Winchester, I’m your god. Show me your adoration.”  
I can’t shut up. Noises keep slipping past my lips, and it’s kindle to his fire. The more vocal I become, the faster, the harder Cas works me and fuck me, but my hips can’t stay still.   
I rub his shoulders and twine his fingers with mine, careful to keep his arms braced on my now naked thighs.   
I don’t remember taking my pants off…  
I stare up at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe - the heat building in my lower abdomen into a torrential flood.   
CasCasCas-tongue-ohmygodthisfeelssodamngood is all my mind can think. Well, that, and how very much I want to do this, over and over and over until we have been so fucked out that we collapse into each other’s arms and continue on in our dreams.   
Cas squeezes my hands and takes me entirely into his mouth. I gasp - the breath I was taking dying in my throat. And I’m frozen like that, mouth gaping and heart pounding like machine gun fire in my ribs. My hips begin bucking and I want to say I have a little more restraint – and usually I do – but then and there, I was at his mercy… And I can’t say I would have wanted it any other way.   
Cas’ tongue laps over my head and he takes me all the way in again, making this heavenly swallowing motion with his tongue beneath my dick that feels like he is trying to goddamn consume me. And I can’t hold on anymore, the feel of his hair, of his weight on me, of that dirty, sarcastic mouth that scorches me with words while able to do this to my body… it all has me tensing, hurling my orgasm into Cas’ mouth just as he sucks it out of me, drop by drop. I thrust into his mouth three full times before I finally empty completely.   
I bang my head against the armrest on the couch, dizzy and drained. I catch a glimpse of Cas, tongue sliding over his lips and he doesn’t tell me and it’s not a thing, but I know he swallowed the load I just released. And there’s a big part of me that wants to say that him fucking swallowing my come means something – something along the lines of how he feels for me – but then there is the logical part of my brain that whispers in certain tones that this is what he does, what he is most skilled at – pleasure - that Cas swallowing my come was second nature to him.   
I hate that part of my brain. I picture myself stabbing a toothpick into it. It goes quiet.   
During my inner turmoil, I hadn’t realized Cas had been watching me, or how closely.   
His eyes are on mine – blue denim on spring leaves - and a devilish smile spreads across the flush on his face.   
“Did anyone ever tell you that when you come, you’re really fucking beautiful?”  
I stare at him and then start cracking up. It’s such a weird, off the wall, Cas thing to say.   
I reach forward, all second nature happening again, lean in, grab the back of his neck and kiss him hard; the salty taste of me still lingering on his lips.   
Cas returns the touch with intensity and I feel him smile against my mouth.   
I don’t need to open my eyes, even though I would pay good money to see everything that passes across his features… but I don’t want to spoil the moment.   
Castiel is smiling. And that to me is a miracle, even if we are both trapped in our own hells.   
We could just burn here together. 

 

~

After what are days or minutes or hours, who the hell is counting, I grudgingly lift Cas off of my lap and go to the little half bath beneath the stairs and wash myself where come has begun to dry. My reflection looks back at me, and for the first time, I don’t snap my gaze away from itself. I stare back and notice the changes – the red still in my cheeks, the mess of sex hair, swollen lips and bright eyes – Maybe Cas is not the only one who will benefit from staying here. I crush the thought as soon as I think it.   
This was a primal thing - one of those urges that two weak people acted on.   
Except… that is utter bullshit.   
I frown at my twin in the glass. The emotion I’m feeling is the lingering effects of the sexual encounter, nothing more. But, as usual, I’m not even convinced by the lies my mind creates.   
I twist off the faucet and drag my eyes away from the mirror; turn off the light and make my way out of the bathroom and back towards the living room where Castiel has returned to watching the fucking bee documentary. It’s so perfect; I have to resist the panicky urge rising in me that feels a hell of a lot like I’m waiting for the other shoe to fall.   
I sit beside him, closer than I would have an hour ago, and I tug the blanket off the back of the couch. It’s an old thing – Karen must have made it before she passed. She was always doing things like that, homey, motherly things for Sam and me when our dad was too drunk to be our dad. There was always Bobby and Karen to fill in the blanks of our strange family. And it worked – hell it was the happiest part of my life – right up until Karen had been stabbed to death by a home intruder. Bobby had shot and killed the monster, but not in time to save Karen. Things were pretty different after that. Our small world became smaller and darker. Sammy and I realized we were different from other kids our age, and not just in the sense that we both realized we had no singular gender preference, but that due to the discordant relationship with our dad, we were totally and utterly fucked up in the mental department. All we could do was stick together, with Bobby playing our surrogate father and every other family member we lacked. Sam eventually left for collage and I stayed here, studying medicine at the local community collage so that maybe one day I could help people instead of watching them die. When I wasn’t studying, I worked at the garage in town, trying to carry my own weight and help Bobby even though he insisted I keep every red cent I made.   
One day, Dad came to visit and caught me kissing my boyfriend at the time – Benny Lafitte. After tossing a couple of death threats Benny’s way, he drug me into the house and started beating me with everything he had. I remember a few words strung together here and there – No son of mine is fuckin’ gay! I’ll fix you... - Shit like that. And my vision had wavered in and out and I hadn’t really cared because my life was not something I was overly attached to. I lay there on the floor and let him pound away until he thought that somehow the blood, bruises and broken bones had exorcised the demon of bisexuality.   
Bobby probably saved my life with that shotgun of his.   
That was the last I saw my dad, because the very next day, Benny and I signed up for the army.   
I drift off, thinking of the past with a hopeful future curled and sleeping quietly against me.  
~  
Cas breaks into my thoughts and dreams with a touch over my face, taking my hand into his lap and dragging his fingertips over my palm. I sleepily looked away from the TV to watch him instead, as he traces strange shapes into the crooks of my hand. I leaned my head against his shoulder and after a moment, he rested his head back against mine. I haul him into my lap and like this is all routine, and Cas draws the blanket up over the both of us.  
This feeling of want and need… it flowed both ways, I was pretty sure - and whether it was loneliness or something less pathetic - maybe even a combination of everything that had happened in our lives, I sat there, the only one awake, watching a damn documentary because Cas had put it on, and he is wrapped up in a blanket and safe in my arms, and there is no damn way I was moving.   
It was more than enough to watch the television cast colors onto his face, turning it into a kaleidoscope of light and shade - blue, red and yellows.   
And I couldn’t wrap my mind around Castiel. He was so beautiful – the sort of beautiful that didn’t need to remind anyone else of its existence. And yet… where had that gotten him? What sort of world punished those with awesome genetics?  
I vowed to his sleeping form he would never again know that life – that I would do everything in my power to make him want to live.  
I turn back to the television, not really watching but careful not to make things strained, even though that was about all they were for me. A bowstring and an arrow notched – aimed straight at my heart – wielded by an alcoholic ex-soldier and a death groupie. 

~Castiel~  
On My Own – Ashes Remain  
Horizon – Luna Blake  
Angels (Acoustic Version) – crywolf, emalyn  
Hearts Beat Loud – Clinton Washington  
The sun filtered through the dusty curtains on the other side of the room, gradually throwing a sickening yellow beam of light across my face. The heat made me stir and stretch, the pull in my wrists reminds me not to move too much, so I go still again. 

Sunlight filters through the dusty daisy print curtains and lands bright and happy across my face and makes everything feel too hot. I sit up, raise a hand to its light and groan. The aroma of coffee winds through the room from the kitchen, where the unmistakable sounds of someone awake and comfortable with the ungodly hour is doing some fucking morning thing that smells like cooking, and God it smells good. I look behind me and find the couch empty.  
I feel the frown take over for a split second and disappear.   
Climbing to my feet with a groan, I make my way into the kitchen doorway and watch Dean go about this normal routine with ease and efficiency. He’s done this before… maybe dozens of times, maybe hundreds, but the little moments of hesitation are dead giveaways to someone who is well schooled in observation of others. Dean hasn’t had someone in this kitchen, including himself, in a very long time – long enough for him to stumble through those mundane tasks he clearly knows.   
I clear my throat and he whirls around, aiming a dripping whisk at me.   
“Hey,” Dean greets, sheepishly, swallowing. There is an awkward moment where we stare at one another – minds so full of things to say but mouths too empty to betray us.   
“Morning,” I murmur back, not bothering to hide my obvious inspection of my caretaker’s body. Dean watches me without shying from my gaze. Something dances in his eyes; a whisper or an echo of last night… desire.   
“I’m sorry you didn’t sleep in your bed,”   
I walk into the kitchen with more bravado than I feel and stand a touch too close to Dean’s side.   
“Two things: One, If you apologize for another goddamn thing, I’m going to punch you.”   
Dean’s eyebrows climb but he stays still, waiting for me to continue.   
“Second,” I conclude, “We both know you are anything but sorry for the reasons we both ended up sleeping on the couch. So… do me a favor, and save it.”  
Dean purses his lips and shrugs whatever he had been about to say off.   
I pause in my quest for coffee and back up a step, which brings me about a full six inches from his face.   
“And third, next time you shrug with those lips… I’m going to do this –“  
Those six inches disintegrate.   
I shove myself against Dean’s chest and my lips against his. Dean stumbles back, caught off guard and his back bounces off of the counter – I can feel it in the way his body suddenly is pushed back against mine. Our lips are still entangled when I brace my hands on the countertop on either side of his waist without once interrupting the kiss. I brush my tongue against his, press it against the roof of his mouth and stroke the underside. I kiss him until there is some semblance of consciousness happening in my brain… That’s when I back up and carefully rearrange the look adoration that must be smeared over my face into one of confidence I don’t remember ever having felt in reality.   
Dean sits me down at the table, and returns back to the counter where a plate of food was waiting, escaping my attention because his lips were so damn distracting. He places it and a mug of steaming coffee before me. The plate is brimming full of bacon and eggs and some sort of cheese.  
I stare at the plate before I stare at him. He watches the entire exchange with a hopeful look and I don’t want to say anything that will wipe that look off his face, but my god, who in the hell gets up this early and is actually capable of functioning?  
“Well?” He asks, motioning with the spatula at the plate I had yet to touch. There was still crust in my eyes, for fuck’s sake.   
“It’s lovely, really,” I mutter, hoping that’ll be enough to appease him.  
No dice. Should have known…   
Nothing I ever attempt turns out as planned.   
Dean’s brow creases and I know I’m in for another round of questions. I haven’t even pissed yet and… my brain can’t find it anywhere to be upset with him, so I sigh, and suck in a mouthful of the brew, which is in bitter need of some sugar. I tell him so and he’s gone and back before I can snap that he took that as a literal request. I thank Dean and he grabs a matching plate and joins me on the other side of the table, consuming a strip of bacon in two rude bites.   
I gesture at him with a strip of my own.   
“Is that an actual apron?”  
Dean looks down at his chest like he is unaware of what the hell he has on.   
He looks back up at me with that crooked grin and I choke down my food so I don’t do something stupid like smile back.   
“Yeah, it is.”  
I raise my eyebrows in response and take a bite of the scrambled eggs, unwilling to admit to myself that they are pretty damn amazing.   
“Well, I didn’t realize you were putting on the nines.”  
He looks confused again.   
“I didn’t realize you had planned on making this a five star stay.” I clarified.   
He laughs and his eyes shine in the too-early morning sun and my stomach does this weird backflip worthy of Barnum and Bailey that I’m definitely chalking up to drugs.   
We eat in silence, mutually stealing glances like a couple of damn sixth graders… never mind the fact that we sort of fucked each other and even cuddled after.   
“So,” Dean says around a mouthful of food, which I can’t find it in myself to be repulsed by either – really, the man has no manners - no matter how hard I try. “I was thinking we should go into town today and grab some food. I’m pretty sure this is about the last real meal this kitchen has.”  
Now it’s my turn to be confused.  
“What if I try to make a break for it?”  
Dean throws his head back and laughs like I’ve just made the most fantastically clever jest in the history of jesting.   
“You’re not going anywhere.” He replies taking a sip of coffee that resembles milk more than the dark, sweet brew I prefer.   
I cross my arms on top of the table in front of me.   
“What makes you so sure?”  
He just grins at me with a look that has my dick rising to attention.   
“Call it an educated guess.”  
“Because of last night…?” I huff with an awkward little laugh.   
He continues that sex stare and I forget what I’m arguing about. I take my mug of coffee and pour at least three swallows into my mouth at once.   
Dean keeps grinning.   
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Maybe I just want someone to walk in the grocery store with. Maybe that’s you.”  
I look at him, searching for any sign of sarcasm or deceit, but his gaze is so clear and warm, I might as well be standing outside in the ray of sunlight coming through the window.   
“Plus, I thought there might be some things you would want to buy for yourself.”  
I’m torn between the fact he silently just offered to buy me whatever I needed or wanted, and the fact that he is taking care of me… when all I’ve known is how to fight and scrape and beg.   
My eyes drift to the scene outside the window and the peace that could be found there.   
Things are different here. He is different, I remind myself for the thousandth time.  
“I’ll go with you.”  
Dean smiles, stands and takes our empty plates and his mug to the sink, rubbing my shoulder as he passes. It’s a simple gesture. And not even one with a lot of thought or crap that could be read into it. But it has me thrown out of the careful orbit I’d been maintaining since leaving the hospital. I was treading on new earth here. And for the first time in my whole life, I didn’t know what to expect from one moment to the next, because what I knew as fact didn’t apply to Dean Winchester.

~

An hour and a half later, I was still damp from the shower, dressed in Dean’s clothes right down to the old sneakers and faded black boxers and we’re driving the thirty or so miles into the little town where we both now claim residency. AC/DC is playing and the windows are down letting the cool autumn air rush in. I glance over at Dean who is busy singing along and holding the wheel with one hand and I can’t help but think… what if this was ever mine? Would I even know how to live in his world?

 

~Dean~  
Control - Halsey  
I Walk the Line – Halsey  
Smokestacks - Layla

 

“Cas, seriously, how can you need so much friggin’ ketchup?”  
He looks over at me, hair at wild angles from his half shower, in my black jacket. His eyes look too blue against the contrast of the fabric and sodium lights. I want to shove him against the shelf and kiss him senseless.   
Cas places the massive bottle of ketchup into the shopping cart, looking extremely pleased with himself.   
“It’s a vegetable, Dean.”  
I stare at his lips.   
“Sure it is, Cas.”  
He turns the side of his mouth up in a grin I’m quickly beginning to realize is meant to disarm me in every way possible. Then he turns away and starts walking, hips swaying just enough to snag my eyes on his ass, as he checks out the nutrition panels on the sides of whatever box or can catches his attention. I roll my eyes but watch every move he makes – not because I’m worried he’s going to take off or anything – but because I can’t look at anything else. Here, in a place where he is free to be whoever it is that he is, Castiel the man instead of whatever the world would have him be, Cas is definitely a sight. Women wheeling their carts by stare at him like he’s the positive half of the magnet behind their negative. I don’t blame them.  
“Dean,”  
I hear Cas call as he rounds the corner and I’m pushing the cart as fast as I dare while trying to maintain some kind of masculinity when we are interrupted by a tall, slender form I knew all too well.   
“Well, well, what is this here?”  
Cas looks at Alistair, and over his shoulder at me, eyes confused.   
Alistair closes the distance to Cas and I’m shoving the cart out of the way in a way that is far from civilized shopper and more fitting to someone creating cover in a warzone.   
“Alistair,” I acknowledge, knowing my voice has gone into some kinda tone that Cas has never heard before because I can feel his eyes on me and the concern wafting off of him, but I can’t stop this.   
It’s all I can do not to call Cas back to my side.   
“Dean?” Cas calls again, a weird panic on his features as his gaze flits between Benny’s cousin and me.   
Before I can speak, Alistair has turned his back on me and is about two fucking inches away from Castiel.   
“Aren’t you the pretty one?” His eyes rake over Cas in a way that has me seeing red.   
Cas locks gazes with him and I’m frozen by the ice in his eyes. It makes winter look like an amateur.  
“Fuck you.”  
Alistair laughs and leans closer.   
“I do love a dirty mouth. They never seem to disappoint. So, anytime you wanna take me up on that offer, angel, I’m game.”  
“That so?” I snarl, shoving the shopping cart out of the way, “Because I don’t remember anybody sending you an invitation.”  
And that’s it. I lunge forward into a swing and Cas dances out of the way like we’ve fought together in for years. My fist connects with Alistair’s jaw and I have about five seconds of pleasure watching his head snap to the side before I realize I’m not finished. I strike out again, catching him in the stomach, winding him long enough to issue a roundhouse to the same place. Alistair tumbles backwards into an end-cap display that comes crashing down under his weight; rolling cans every which way. Before he can move, I’m straddling him and beating his face one way and back the other.   
“If you lay a finger on him, Alistair, I swear to God…”  
He laughs through the blood in his teeth.  
“What Dean? Tell me what you and God are going to do to me if I fuck your pretty little angel?”  
Every breath he takes, every word out of his mouth makes me want to bust a new part of his face.   
I snarl at him and smash my fist into his nose. Something cracks with the impact and blood spatters back, misting onto my face.  
From the corner of my eye, frightened customers are running for the exit doors.  
“No one touches him.”  
I grab fistfuls of his dingy blue button-up and slam him against the tile floor… but not hard enough. Alistair twists in my grip and suddenly the entire fucking world consists of stabbing pain, streaking through me as his knee connects with my kidney.  
I cry out in wordless pain.  
Taking the opening, Alistair flips onto my back, climbs onto my waist and proceeds to return the beat down I just gave, blow for blow. My back still aches from the strike, and now my face feels like it was backed over by about a dozen Mack trucks. It’s my turn to have my head bashed in, except Alistair chooses a can instead of a fist.   
He always was a son of a bitch to take on.  
I twist and dodge, but it’s not enough. He smashes the can against my face over and over until I can’t fucking see straight through the tears of pain and all of the blood.  
“You should have stayed dead,” He murmurs between swipes. “Benny should be fucking that sweet ass, not you... Not… you…”  
The words work their charm on me as he and I both know they will. And they kindle my fire because one minute I was blacking out, and the next I’m spitting blood at him.   
He bashes me again with the can. Its edges are bent.  
I struggle against the weight holding me down, but my mind can’t seem to remember how to coordinate the movement. In fact, everything seems to be fading in and out.   
Distantly, I wonder why that is.  
My eyes flutter and slip closed and the last thing I see are Alistair’s hands around my throat. I claw at the viselike grip, blind, but it is nothing if not ineffective. Struggling starts to take too much effort and my efforts grow weaker.   
I become stiller. My heartbeat slows to a thick crawl in my ears. I open my eyes a fraction, hoping Cas got out of the store. Took the car, ran the hell away… And suddenly there is a flash of black and blue over the hands and shoulders trying to kill me, and Cas has Alistair under him with one of those grocery store knives unpackaged and pressed at his throat.   
Instinct, training, logic kicks in and I roll to the side, out of the way, coughing, and dripping blood onto the commonplace market tile.  
Nothing will stop spinning. I try to focus on the sounds around me between fits of coughing.  
Cas is yelling… I squeeze my eyes shut and try to understand so I can fix it when I can breathe again.   
“If you ever touch him again, I swear to God I will fucking cut out your heart and shove it down your throat!”  
I peel my eyes apart.   
Cas snarls the threat as the tip of the untested knife slices through the skin over Alistair’s Adam’s apple.   
“Do you understand me? Do you?”   
Cas is screaming at Alistair, rage etched over every surface of his face, down his arms and into the set of his shoulders.  
I turn onto my hands and knees, needing to be over there, needing to get Cas away from Alistair. But there is even more yelling and suddenly, there’s a gun barrel pointed at Cas and I’m the one yelling, yelling so loudly my throat burns and someone else is screaming at me in return, and none of it makes any fucking sense but my heart is jackhammering inside my ribs too deafeningly, pushing my pulse into my ears and… I need Cas.   
I need Cas.   
A gun is trained on me.   
Seconds become days.   
Cas looks over at me, eyes too blue, and the knife is on the tile beside his knee.   
I need.   
They’re hauling him to his feet and I remember his stitches.   
I scream at them to not hurt him, and of course none of what exits my mouth makes remotely any sense. I scream anyway, to be careful, to watch his arms.   
Cas.   
Jody Mills – Bobby’s once upon a time high school sweetheart looks at me and slides Castiel’s sleeve up. He doesn’t even look at her. He’s breathing steadily, eyes on me.   
Cas.  
“Winchester, what is this?” Jody calls to me as she eyes the bandages.   
“He… they’re stitches. Please, don’t cuff him. He saved me.”  
Jody looks quickly over at Cas, assessing him and over at the much larger form of Alistair, who is now being hauled to his feet by Meg.  
Nothing can be said about our little town not having its fair share of tough women.  
Jody’s brow furrows and thought clouds her normally unreadable features as she gazes once again back between the three of us, and it’s clear there’s a piece of information she knows is missing.   
Someone must have radioed an ambulance because there are paramedics streaming through the aisles and swarming the three of us.   
I need him.  
“Donna, keep a watch on these two. EMT’s are taking this one -“Jody jerks her head over to indicate a bloody Alistair “to the hospital for that cut. Meg, I need you to do a ride along.”  
Meg rolls her eyes and shoots a dark look at Alistair. “Awesome. We get to play Dr. Sexy without the Dr. or the Sexy. Jackass.”  
“Meg,” Jody reprimands, but there’s no heat in her voice.   
“Where are you gonna go?” Donna asks the sheriff.   
Jody moves me over beside Cas to sit on the lip of the cooler that doubles as display for cold cuts.  
“I’m going to watch the store’s tapes, see what the hell happened here. Get Winchester and company’s statement.”  
Ever the good cop, Donna nods in agreement.   
“Will do!”  
Meg drags Alistair a little too roughly towards the front swinging doors, still in cuffs. 

 

~

“Alright, uncuff Winchester.”  
Donna rises from her perch beside me at the front of the store. She’d been holding a bag of frozen peas on my face to help with the swelling. There’s not too much we can do about the swelling here. I would need to stop by Rufus’ clinic. I knew it was all to help, but I felt exactly five years old or at least thirty one and completely emasculated.   
Once I hear the lock pop open I slowly ease my arms forwards, rolling my shoulders. I feel Castiel’s gaze on me like a spotlight and all I can think of is that this was meant to help him. Everything I’d done and given up – it was all for him. Not that he would ever know… because everything I intended to do kept turning into something else.   
“Dean, I know you’ve already given Donna your statement, but would you mind telling me again what happened with Alistair?” Jody doesn’t look like she’s angry or frustrated, just tired. She’s looked that same way since Bobby never returned her love and then up and died, surprising and tearing all of our hearts out.   
“It was fucking Alistair, Jody, what more do you want me to say? Hell, what more can I say?”  
Mills’ face turns hard but I can tell she’s still listening to whatever crap excuse comes out of my mouth.  
“He started saying shit about Cas and I… he brought up Benny, Jody.”  
Understanding dawns on her face and she nods as if it became clear, all that was unclear. Over Jody’s shoulder Cas’ eyes are on me and I can feel the questions burning. I can’t talk about Benny, not now, not here. I hope he can understand.   
Jody stands and motions for Donna to do the same.   
She looks at Cas.   
“Was that the way you remember it?”  
He never looks away from me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking; all I can do is hope to Hell that it isn’t about leaving… because I really fucking need Cas.   
“That’s exactly what happened.”  
Jody raises an eyebrow at our prolonged eye contact.   
“I hear that you were recently a patient of Dean’s, is that true?”  
Cas finally looks away from me.  
“Yes, he saved my life.”  
Jody turns back to me and makes a face.   
“Seems to be a trend,”  
I scrub my face.   
“Yeah, yeah it does.”  
Stowing the cuffs back at her belt she addresses the both of us.  
“You two were lucky. The manager chose not to press any charges or ban you from the store... This is one hell of a gesture considering you’d be stuck driving halfway into Seattle for bread, Dean.”  
I nod in acknowledgement like I know she expects.   
“Anyway, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that your face looks like someone tried to beat your skull in with a can of corn.”  
Jody returns to Cas.   
“Take him over to The Clinic. Go straight there or I’m hauling your asses straight to jail for the night. Got that?”   
Cas nods and takes the keys from my pocket.   
Thanking Jody as we leave, I follow Cas back to the Impala.


End file.
